Every now and again a reader will send me a letter highlighting the fact that high-priced speaker leads and other hifi accessory products continue to be sold by hifi retailers. In fact, there is a letter on this topic in this month’s Mailbag pages. These days I just tend to shake my head in continuing amazement at the apparently endless ignorance and gullibility of customers and the completely shameless exploitation of this credulousness by some hifi retailers.

We’ve seen it all before: oxygen free speaker cables with long grain copper; Litz-wound cables to avoid high frequency skin effect; directional interconnects; special video cables and so on. All wrapped up with technical-sounding mumbo-jumbo designed to confuse the already muddle-headed customer with money burning a hole in his pockets.

Considering their willingness to sell this high-priced rubbish, some hifi retailers make car salesman and real estate agents look like honest people. I will go further: How can you trust the recommendations of any hifi dealer who sells these accessories? One recent "innovation" involves interconnect cables with a 12V or 24V battery or 48V supply to supposedly bias the cable’s dielectric. You can also have biased speaker cables, ranging from $1415 to $14,715 a pair.